The present invention relates to a digital contents vending machine for selling digital contents, or more in particular to a technique effectively applicable to a digital contents vending machine for selling personal digital contents the replay of which is limited to the purchaser.
With the development of the communication through the internet and satellites, a system has been developed to distribute and sell digital contents. This trend indicates that the computer and the network are required as an infrastructure for wide extension of the digital contents throughout the society. In the distribution and sales of the digital contents, the digital contents are required to be distributed or sent to a sales point in the vicinity of the general users, and to be sold from a vending machine.
The conventional digital contents vending machine is installed in convenience stores, for example. Such a vending machine has the function of searching for a commodity, outputting the order receipt for the ordered commodity, reserving for a commodity, copying from a CD-ROM to a medium, etc., whereby the digital contents selected by the customer are copied from the CD-ROM to other medium which is sold.
For preventing the illegal use of the digital contents, the function is required to limit and permit the use of the digital contents to the individuals who have legitimately purchased the particular digital contents. However, the conventional digital contents vending machine cannot sell the digital contents as a commodity permitted to be used only by a person. Therefore, the problem is that the illegal use of the sold digital contents cannot be prevented.
The conventional digital contents vending machine also lacks the function of preventing the illegal use of the original digital contents from which copies are produced. As a result, the illegal use in which the original digital contents stored in the CD-ROM or the vending machine are illegally copied or downloaded or a medium for storing the original digital contents is brought away, cannot be prevented.
The object of the present invention is to solve these problems and to provide a technique capable of preventing the illegal use of the sold digital contents.
According to the present invention, there is provided a digital contents vending machine for selling personal digital contents of which the qualification for replay is limited to a purchaser.
In the digital contents vending machine according to the present invention, commodity information of digital contents meeting a retrieval condition input by a customer is displayed, and identification information of the digital contents selected by the customer is received.
A payment confirmation processing unit of a digital contents vending machine displays a GUI (graphical user interface) for payment confirmation on a display unit, and waits for a payment confirmation operation from a sales staff. When an operation indicating a payment confirmation completion such as push of a payment confirmation button is performed, it is determined that payment of a charge for the digital contents selected by the customer is completed. As an alternative, it can be determined that the payment of the charge for the digital contents selected by the customer is completed upon receipt of payment confirmation information transmitted from a POS (point of sales) system after the charge for the digital contents is paid in the POS system.
A sales processing unit of the digital contents vending machine sets a personal identification (personal ID) for identifying the customer as status information for permitting the particular customer to replay the digital contents for which the payment of the charge is confirmed in the manner described above and thereby generates the personal digital contents. This personal digital contents are copied to a medium or downloaded to a replay unit to thereby sell the digital contents selected by the customer.
As described above, according to the present invention, the digital contents are sold after inputting the personal ID of the customer who has purchased the digital contents to generate the personal digital contents. Therefore, the particular digital contents cannot be used by other than the particular customer. As a result, even if the sales staff or other customers illegally acquire the particular digital contents, they cannot be viewed or heard the particular digital contents. Thus, the illegal use of the digital contents can be prevented.
Also, according to the present invention, the digital contents cannot be copied or downloaded before the payment confirmation of the charge, so that the illegal duplication or downloading of the digital contents can be prevented. Further, according to the present invention, the information on the sales staff who confirms the payment is recorded, so that when the sales staff who illegally confirms the payment by operating the vending machine, he can be easily identified.
Further, according to the present invention, the vending machine or a distribution control center monitors the state of the vending machine. An attempt to open the cover of the vending machine and bring away the digital contents stored therein causes the sales processing to be stopped or the digital contents to be deleted, so that it is possible to prevent the illegal removal of the digital contents.
As described above, in the digital contents vending machine according to the present invention, the personal digital contents the replay qualification of which is limited to the particular purchaser are sold, so that it is possible to prevent the illegal use of the sold digital contents.